In the 90s, Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing became the ‘best-selling piece of educational software of all time’. But over 30 years on, its legacy is murkier than ever.
The last decade of the millennia saw a technological boom as computers became commonplace in classrooms and households around the globe. And along with it came a vital new skill – typing.
Enter pioneering tech figure Mavis Beacon, an early internet avatar that helped students learn to navigate their keyboards with ease through interactive games and challenges to improve their typing speed.
Soon enough, Mavis was a second teacher to millions and became so beloved across the US (and beyond) that she was getting called up to become a keynote speaker at lectures and deliver workshops.
There’s just one caveat. Mavis Beacon isn’t real.
Well, kind of. If you Google ‘does Mavis Beacon exist?’ the bolded-up answer ‘Mavis Beacon is an entirely fictional character’ appears. But the truth goes far deeper than a surface-level search.
Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing swept the nation in the 90s – but what’s the truth behind the software?
During the pandemic, filmmakers Jazmin and Olivia (self-dubbed ‘e-girl detectives’) decided to get to the bottom of who Mavis Beacon is, the spark behind her immense popularity, and where exactly she is today.
‘For me, Mavis Beacon was my cyber doula. My earliest memories of being at a computer are with her. Retroactively, I’ve realised she was also my first Black teacher,’ Jasmin told Metro as the Seeking Mavis Beacon premiered at London Film Festival.
She continued: ‘It’s possible the reason I’ve become so obsessed with her and parasocial is because it was really important to see this Black woman on a computer. I’m a cyberfeminist artist, I’m not really sure I would be standing here today if it wasn’t for Mavis Beacon.’
Unlike Jazmin’s childhood connection, Olivia didn’t grow up under Mavis’ steady hand and instead discovered her through Jazmin, describing it as ‘healing’ to ‘encounter Mavis as a character’.
‘There are so many doors into people’s hearts that Mavis Beacon opens just by saying her name in a crowded room. People are suddenly willing to walk down memory lane with you
‘She fundamentally changed young people’s access to opportunity during a time period when your ability with technology opened doors,’ she added.
Jazmin and Olivia didn’t rest until they found out what happened to Renee L’Esperance (Picture: Neon)
At its core, although Mavis may simply have taught people to type, to Jazmin it was so much more than that. She taught people to communicate.
But still the million-dollar question remained – who is she?
The character, created by Joe Abrams, Les Crane and Walt Bilofsky, is physically based on Haitian model Renee L’Esperance who was paid a mere $500 to give her face to the software in 1987.
In the documentary, the creators make it clear they weren’t trying to be ‘woke’ when they chose Renee as the face of their software although they wanted to make their product as marketable as possible.
Jazmin, 30, added: ‘If you put a Black woman’s face on the box, it’s gonna be the only one in the aisle at the store that has a Black woman’s face on it.
‘And so their goal was very like, cut and dry. We want people to pick up this box, turn it over, read the box, and then buy it – and they treated her like a real person.’
How do you go about finding someone who disappeared without a trace?
Although the software was a hit and created a ‘perfect storm of things’ to make it fly off the shelves, in the end, Jasmin believes ‘Renee L’Esperance’s image and her lending her likeness was probably the most important piece of the recipe.’
As Mavis Beacon boomed, Renee slipped into the shadows and eventually entirely disappeared from the scene – with no one seeing her again. All these years later, our pair of detectives have one simple goal: to check she is okay.
The profound search involves missing person posters, attempts to reach out to family and a strange sense of futility in the face of terrible odds. Nonetheless, they persevered.
Five years of effort, three laptops and two cellphones later, these ‘DIY detectives’ dug up a truth desperately buried by all parties (in the doc we see them stumble upon a Facebook group filled with people concerned about the investigation).
So what happened? Well, in 1999, Renee sued the company for misusing her image and settled out of court.
She then requested for her digital footprint to be erased in its entirety. In the documentary, both Jazmin and Olivia are moved to tears in their plight to try and contact Renee all these years later – getting as far as her son.
But their journey ended up being the most important discovery – and the very real questions they were confronted with about the future of AI and ownership. Especially for marginalised groups that are often overlooked in development.
‘What does it mean to have a Black woman in the perpetual role of digital servitude?’ the documentary asks. And what are the moral boundaries at play in the pursuit of justice when someone doesn’t want to be found?
‘The larger story of Mavis Beacon is that we need to regulate what is happening in the technological sphere. We, as consumers, have the power to push back on an individual level.
‘You can opt out. We don’t have to lay down and let AI train itself on our stolen data.’
Olivia added: ‘So many capitalistic structures pay lots of money for you to continue saying yes. What if you Uber Eats instead of walking to the store so we can know where you live… that kind of thing.
‘I hope people can watch Renee’s insistence of inconvenience in favour of autonomy.’
The documentary takes its twists and turns as they are met by roadblocks and a disconcerting lack of information.
As described by the duo: ‘This film was crafted with love and
care. (And blood and sweat and tears and mental breakdowns and all-nighters). It’s dense and ambitious.’
But ultimately, it pays homage to Renee, and the impact Mavis Beacon has had on countless people over the years.
‘I think there’s so much insight to be taken from Renee L’Esperance and how she’s moved in relation to Mavis Beacon,’ Jazmin concluded.
‘There is a moment midway through the film where everything changes for Olivia and I think it’s really exciting. It changed the conversation far beyond what we ever expected.’
Although Renee has left the past in the past, this documentary achieves what it set out to do. Correcting the record so she can finally get her due.
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